It’s going to be a big year for fans of The Legend of Zelda if the previews for Tears of the Kingdom are to be believed. At a recent event in Manhattan, a handful of journalists were able to get an early look at TotK for the first time, and they shared their findings across various publications. What’s been revealed is a game that some have stated that “might be bigger than Elden Ring.”
That quote comes from the Twitter page of The Washington Post gaming journalist Gene Park, who elaborated more in his feature covering the game. “Thanks to the addition of underground and sky areas, there appears to be far more area to explore than what was available in the also-gargantuan Elden Ring,” Park wrote. Not only because of the caves but because the islands in the skies also have cave systems themselves. These underground areas were seen in a gameplay leak reported on April 14, so anyone worried about the map size should have those fears allayed.
He also gives some further insights into the features of the game, including the UltraHand ability previously shown in the latest gameplay trailer, which is apparently based on a 1966 Nintendo toy of the same name. Using this ability, he discusses the things players can create like “rocket ships or robots.”
Overall, he stresses that the game seeks to evolve on Breath of the Wild‘s gameplay, truly allowing players to create their own solutions for solving each obstacle. When comparing the game to BotW, he writes “players six years later are still finding new tricks to navigate the world and defeat enemies, particularly the ones in Japan. Tears further leans into that ethos and will probably be played for years in similar fashion.”
Park wasn’t the only person to get their hands on a carefully-curated section of TotK, either, with Alex Olney of NintendoLife also sharing his thoughts on the upcoming title. He gives a humorous take on the Fuse mechanic, which will seemingly allow players to attach whatever they want to their weapons. While this may lead to many useless combinations, some may have surprising effects.
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As Olney writes, “You can’t actually attach an apple to the end of a sword and expect it to do any good, can you? We had a similarly short-sighted mindset at first, but after trying it for ourselves we are happy to report that ‘for goodness sake, of course it gives you a minor attack boost, Bokoblins hate apples!’”
He also discusses the issue he had with an arrow not reaching its target because they were too far away. Naturally, he thought “is there something we could fuse to an arrow that would give it more flight? Some bows could do that in Breath of the Wild after all. In our first experiment, we tried fusing a Keese Wing, and it worked.”
In the IGN preview, Brian Altano discussed his impressions of how expansive the game’s world seems to be, writing “If the Hyrule below is the updated open world from Breath of the Wild, the sky sections feel more akin to The Wind Waker…There are tons and tons of islands up there in disparate clusters and formations and it’s up to you to figure out exactly how you’re going to travel between them, take on their endless puzzles, conflicts, and caves, and move on to the next one.”
That’s not all, as he also touches on the creativity required for puzzles, including bending the game’s rules to get your desired outcome. One interesting puzzle he describes is getting around the Ultrahand’s limitations: “You won’t be able to use it on organic things like animals or enemies or anything bolted down to the ground like a tree stump or a rock structure, but there are some interesting exceptions to that rule.”
He explains this further, writing “in one puzzle, a stranded Korok trying to reunite with another Korok on a different sky island needed help getting over there, and since he was wearing a large hiking backpack, I was able to use Ultrahand to pick him up, put him in a minecart, and get him back to his buddy, netting me two Korok seeds as a reward.
If nothing else, these hands-on previews offer the first look at an expansive world that seems to encourage creative playstyles. While the world in BotW was big and provided ample opportunities to explore, it seems like it will be minuscule compared to what players will be able to see inside TotK. With the game coming out on May 12, we’re likely to learn more and more about TotK in the upcoming weeks.
